Phineus received a few more items over the last week or so.
Newly added are a pair of wheel encoders, which will
provide feedback to cure his tendency to "drift" slightly
to the left (a problem with large pneumatic tires not
sharing the same diameters).

The equipment bay was redesigned and will be comprised of
a 22-inch; turret mounted tower, which will contain 6 - 7 X
5 X 3-inch aluminum project boxes. This is in keeping with
the modular design of Phineus. The separate boxes will
contain NAV, Arm control, Acoustic, etc... subsystems.

As Phineus is octagonal, he would require 8 acoustic
sensors to "watch" his surroundings. I selected two
large-scale hobby servos (275 oz-in) to drive two acoustic
sensors. These are very large servos and I am slaving a
fair size acoustic enclosure (2.5 X 4.25 X 1.25 inch), I
eventually want to put to work my fourth semester computer
interfacing class and have a 360 degree video sonar
representation. The larger servos can dramatically increase
the scanning rate! More importantly, I think it looks and
sounds so much "cooler" (i.e. goose bump stuff) with these
huge servos "whining" away ;-)

What is in a name? I decided long ago that my "budding
creation" required a name. My wife kept referring to him as
"it" or the "thing" in the basement. After all, we are all
proud of the stuff, which we dream up in our heads and this
would just not do. As a devote science fiction and fantasy
fan, the movie "Jason and the Argonauts" immediately came
to mind. Phineus was a seer and set Jason on the correct
path to find the Golden Fleece. I think Phineus will send
me on the correct path to home robotics.

This is a cool site! I enjoy reading about other members'
impressive robots and talking about mine. When I talk about
Phineus with my neighbors, their eyes go glassy and they
talk about the weather.....Sigh.

Phineus is really starting to take shape. I designed the
chassis to be modular and this makes it easier to
incorporate design changes. I designed all his components
using AutoCAD and take the files to a local company, which
uses high pressure water to cut almost anything. The
operating pressure of the cutting machine is 68K psi (.008
diameter cutting jet) and is capable of cutting up to
7-inch thick steel plate.

I have used ½ to 1/16-inch thick aluminum plate
constructing Phineus, the ½ inch stock is for the drive
support and arm support shoulder assemblies. Phineus is 22
inches wide (octagonal base) and 44 inches tall with the
arm stowed. The arm is revolute coordinate based design and
has a 25-inch reach.

Phineus uses differential drive with fully suspended fore
and aft 4 inch casters. The drive wheels are almost 10-inch
pneumatic wheels and the 12VDC motors use 2-stage gear
reduction from approximately 2800 RPM to a final drive of
14 RPM (a torque monster!). I tested Phineus with a 200 lb.
payload (me) and he had a speed of 9.5 inches per second
(using no speed control....excellent autonomous speed) and
each motor only consumed 700mA.

I have started to play with the BS2 and will be working on
the acoustic sensors next.